The Florida Zeppelin sighting forecast is now 17% (thats added to the current global forecast). Of course Florida is pretty weird so its entirely possible that Florida already exists in it’s own parallel universe and has done for some time.

+++ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT PRESIDENT TRUMP INFORMED REPORTERS ON AIR FORCE ONE THAT HIS PROPOSED BORDER WALL NEEDS TO BE SEE-THROUGH, OR AT LEAST HAVE HOLES IN IT, SO AMERICANS DON’T GET CRUSHED BY FALLING BAGS OF DRUGS+++

I’m not buying this story. I think the real reason for the fear of falling drugs is that they’re dropping out of Zeppelins as they transition to our reality. Therefore the current Zeppelin sighting forecast for the US/Mexico border areas is standing at 22%.

+++A GROUP CALLED ‘COLORADANS FOR LIBERTY’ BRINGS VOLUNTARY THREE DAY COURSE TO THE STATE+++

We predict a 10% chance of Zeppelins in Colorado. This is a massive increase on the usual 1.5%. Furthermore we are suspicious that Colorado knows something we don’t and that’s why they’re arming teachers. Thus we predict a 2% chance of total societal collapse. We think if there is a collapse there’s an even chance that it will be down to Zombies. Thus we are predicting a 1% chance of a Zombie Apocalypse starting in Colorado.

Should there be an actual Zombie Apocalypse in Colorado then the local chance of Zeppelin sighting will be at least 80% with a 40% minimum chance globally. I’m calling it now. In the event of a Zombie Apocalypse we will be evacuated by Zeppelins.

I’m estimating the chance of zeppelin sightings above Alaska between now and July 1st at 30%. This is only 10% up from the local base chance of 20% but Alaska was pretty alternative already.

Note for the confused:

It’s a long standing trope of science fiction that you know an alternative reality by the presence of zeppelins. This means that the Earth in was an alternative reality between 1893 and 1937. Which makes a lot of sense if you look at history.

Sadly I am still not feeling like writing anything constructive or useful. I had planned another commentary on a film or another post full of advice for young writers but I’m on strike.

I am on strike because the world continues to be unfairly messed up.

In the United States politics continues to be a shit show. The ongoing argument about the extent to which the Trump administration is corrupt, incompetent, or in the pocket of Moscow may distract people from the attempts to ninja a terrible new healthcare act through the Senate.

In the UK our Prime Minister risks restarting armed conflict in Northern Ireland in order to hold on to power. She’s trying to do a deal with the DUP – a party with longstanding links to loyalist terror groups; a bunch of climate change denying, creationist, homophobes who hate Catholics. There are just a few massive problems with this.

It risks breaching the Good Friday Agreement.

It’s pissed of Sinn Fein so much that there are rumours the might take up their seats in the Westminster Parliament.

The DUP will resist the hard Brexit demanded by much of the Conservative base because they don’t want to reinstate the border with the Republic of Ireland.

So will Sinn Fein if they do take up their seats.

The only genuinely popular Conservative politician in the UK, and leader of the Scottish Conservatives, is a Lesbian who’s engaged to an Irish Catholic woman.

The British media has spent most of the last five days telling us that a second Scottish independence referendum is dead because the SNP only won a clear majority of the votes, not the overwhelming landslide they won last time. Both the Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish Labour Party are claiming a victory. Even though both of them put together have just over half the seats of the SNP.

Every day the news is full of stuff that makes no sense. I have had enough.

I had a couple of ideas for today’s post. I had one in mind that was full advice for young creatives. I wanted to write something for my daughter who has trouble finishing things. But then some arsehole blew himself up inside an arena full of teenaged girls and suddenly that seems inappropriate.

I was flicking through Facebook and Twitter, not wanting to know more but unable to stop when I spied a comment from a right-wing journalist. I’m not going to link to the tweet or name the journalist because attention only encourages people like this. I will include the full text of the tweet though.

Why do we suspend politics when a terror attack happens? I want to know how our politicians plan to stop these attacks. Or don’t they know?

Oh dear lord. Where to begin?

Well for one thing they don’t know how to stop attacks like this because we don’t know what happened. There’s still an ongoing investigation. Maybe we should wait for the police and the security services to work out how it happened before we decide what to do about it?

Of course if you start by believing that Islam is inherently evil or brown people are less human than white people then I imagine you think you know what we should do. I’m sure that this particular journalist isn’t suggesting any of that. Plenty of other people were, though. I’ve heard a rumour that a certain other right-wing ‘journalist’ even used the phrase ‘final solution’.

We know where this particular road goes and I think most of us don’t want to go that way.

To answer the first question; we suspend politics in the face of terribly tragedy like this because Britain is a civilised fucking country. Making political capital out of terror is morally reprehensible.

To continue electioneering in the face of a terror attack is also fraught with danger. The ruling party shouldn’t be campaigning at a time like this it should be ruling. The parties in opposition could stand on the side taking cheap shots but if they win that way then the victory would be cheapened and they risk distracting the government. The government could deal with the distraction by calling the opposition unpatriotic and mobilising public opinion against them. The opposition could blame the government for the attack.

Then you’d get two factions drawn up against one another along party lines. The country would be divided. The terror attack would have damaged our democracy. Which was precisely the point.

Just occasionally in my pursuit of displacement activity I find a few moments of peace. I forget that I should be writing or querying, I forget that there are chores that need doing, I forget that there’s a reality TV star in the whitehouse and that the British Prime Minister called a snap election to avoid fraud charges and that Britain is leaving the EU and that the NHS is heading toward full privatisation and that basically we are all fucked.

Whenever I question the value of my writing I remember those moments of peace. Because it’s reading a novel, or a comic, or watching a TV show or film that gives me those moments. One purpose of art, any art, is to give us peace.

There are other purposes. Sometimes art tells us truths that are too unpalatable to learn by another method. Sometimes art turns pain and loss into beauty to memorialise what should never be forgotten. Sometimes art elevates our soul and gives us hope that we are something more than just unusually violent, hairless apes. Sometimes art is a distraction from pain, or boredom or fear.

So I am going to write my stupid stories without feeling that I need to apologise because I’m not solving world hunger or saving the environment. I’d love to do those things but I don’t have the skills, or the knowledge and I don’t have the first clue how to get them. If I can create something that gives other people a little peace then I will have done something worthy with my life.

Once again I return to the subject of how messed up everything is right now. For those who’ve missed my previous posts on the subject the title of this one is a joke about how in fiction Zeppelins are often a signifier of alternative reality.

If you’ve studied much history you’ll know that sometimes stuff happened that makes us look back and wonder exactly what Clio (muse of history) was smoking. There was a time when tulips were so sought after that a single bulb could sell for more than a house. There was a time when Britain used opium to pick two fights with China because China wouldn’t sell Britian enough tea and somehow Britain won. There was a time when armed gangs roamed the wild west of the U.S. battling over the remains of ancient monsters . There’s a period of European history (1870 -1914) known as the Great Binge because everyone who could afford it was constantly off their faces with a combination of drugs and alcohol. In 1932 Australia went to war against Emus (actual birds) and lost.

I think that we’re living through one of those periods right now. In the future people are going to look back and wonder if the train of reality somehow jumped its tracks. That’s assuming that there is a future and that the people alive then will have anything to look back on other than a giant crater.

Lets take a look at some of the fun things that have happened in little over a year:

Widespread clown panics that suddenly stopped when a man many deride as a clown was elected to lead the United States of America.

The British Electorate voted to leave the EU and then the British Government tried to aggressively implement that vote without apparently having any sort of map or plan about how to do it.

The Northern Irish Assembly fell apart over a financial scandal, there still isn’t a new Assembly in place, but Northern Ireland voted against leaving the EU so Ireland could be about to reunify? Maybe?

Scotland votes to remain in the EU. The UK Government refuses to let Scotland remain without the rest of the UK. The SNP led Scottish Government votes to hold a referendum on Independence (again). The UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, calls this decision divisive and says that it’s the wrong time and continues to say that right up until she calls a snap General Election that she had repeatedly said the could not and would not call.

In the wake of the election of a reality TV star with zero relevant experience or expertise the US begins a slide into a dystopian failed state. This slide is repeatedly halted by lawyers working for free and judges who’ve somehow become the enemy of the establishment. Scientists steal back their own climate science data before the White House deletes it. The US parks service goes rogue and leads the resistance.

The French presidential election is going to be a runoff between a fascist and the representative of a new political movement who is most famous for having married his former school teacher.

The apparent terrorist attack on a German Soccer team bus turned out to be an attempted financial scam by stock price manipulation.

The government of Chechnya has decided that now is the perfect time for a gay genocide. Presumably they think that Trump will distract everyone.

Marco Rubio, previously not a friend of LGBTQA rights, stands up and denounces the gay genocide. Has he discovered that he actually has both a spine and a conscience or this this just because Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya, is Vladimir Putin’s other boyfriend?

Russia has built a replica of the German parliament, the Reichstag, so the army could re-enact storming it. There is nothing at all threatening about the fact that the replica is based on the contemporary Reichstag rather than the way it looked in 1945 when the Red Army actually stormed it.

Kim Jong Un, the world’s favourite cosplay dictator, is so upset by now being the third or fourth craziest world leader that he has tried to pick a fight with the US. Presumably he’s banking on Donald Trump not knowing where North Korea is and launching missiles at North Virginia instead.

In the US the Republican Party narrowly avoids another Government shutdown in the face of opposition from the Republican president and the Republican held Senate and House of Representatives. The Democrats are confused by the Republicans taking the positions as both the party of government and the party of opposition. Democrats may have to start disguising themselves as Republicans in order to more effectively oppose the policies of the President. Or maybe judges. Or Scientists. Or park rangers.

Am I in a coma or something? Is this all a hallucination? The rest of you are seeing this stuff too, right?